Once Were
by the Scary Godmother
Summary: Quistis at age 65 reflects on her life and the lives of her friends. My first finished fic, please r


Once Were by the Scary Godmother.   
Not a single digipixel of the characters, places, or events from Final Fantasy VIII are my property or creation. The events in this story and the characters of Kira, Anakin and Lecium are however mine and let the rest go to the dogs.   
  
  
I remember the thrill of the battle.   
The crack of my whip and the whine of the scorched air as I made my killing blow. The excitement of hunting down a monster, the chance of being attacked, the pride of a perfect victory. I close my eyes and I can smell the starched lightly flowered scent of my crisp coral tunic, feel the Save the Queen in my hands, it's oiled leather length slipping easily around my fingers, the pressure of my tightly bound hair and the slight creak of my high boots as I move. Somehow, these days, I can so easily loose myself in memory and it all seems like yesterday to me.   
I can see Selphie still in my mind, her loopy hair and bright giggling eyes. I did not know her long, but she was a fast friend, always urging me to try new things, new people... My heart felt broken when she died, and for awhile it was like nothing was real, like nothing could quite touch me without my friend by my side. I still miss her, even though she has been gone nearly thirty years; I can still hear her laughter.   
She was the first of us to go, the accident a shock to everyone. Selphie and I, as well as Squall, Rinoa, Zell, we all gained an amount of fame after the War of the Sorceress.... That was what they decided to call it, I guess it has more of a ring than 'that time those kids saved time and space as we know it'. We weren't exactly heroes, but we never had to pay for a meal or go hunting for new weapons again. Selphie managed to turn her good graces into a stunning combat career, running messages across enemy lines and getting supplies to SeeDs who were stranded or caught in a dispute. She was there when someone needed her...and then, one day, she was on the outskirts of the Centra ruins close to the line of fire and the ground just collapsed beneath her, they said it was a sinkhole created by the rubbish. Sinkhole my chocobo.   
That was the first time we all saw each other again, standing in the polished auditorium of Balamb Garden as Selphie's body was prepared for capsule burial in space. It has a morbid appropriateness to it, that only in the times of crisis or grief would we all be together. I and the others too I think, saw Selphie wink at us every time we looked at the sky from that night forward.   
I guess her death just brought the old memories back, it certainly brought it back to the papers. It was like they found every article, picture and blurb every published about any of us and splashed them around again. The pressure and pain was too much for some of us.... Irvine killed himself that winter. He shot himself through the face, fitting I suppose. It seems he never got over his fling with Selphie, and that hurt me a little more than his passing, considering he was my husband.  
Speaking of husbands and wives, if I remember right, that was about the time Rinoa had the twins. She and Squall had always had a strange relationship, and after her birth, like most times when the action was too intense or emotional, Squall disappeared for a few months. Rinoa was heartsick, she thought he would never come back. I made it no secret that I never liked Rinoa, and she never liked me much either, but I felt sorry for her. I arranged for Zell to stay with her while I took the Ragnarok and searched every island, continent and town until I found Squall and dragged him home. He was piss drunk in some dingy dive in an anonymous port, so malnourished he couldn't even stand, but I picked him up, cleaned him off and delivered him home to his wife and sons.... Sons, if it had been any other man, we wouldn't have been able to tear him away. I think the point was made better than I ever could have by the fact that for the first year of their lives, Kira and Anakin called Zell 'Dada'.   
Kira and Anakin, more names I haven't thought of in years. They boarded at Trabia Garden as soon as the rebuilding was finished. They actually had a hand in the completion, painting the dormitories an atrocious shade of what was forever known afterwards as 'Trabia Orange'. Kira looked exactly like his father; same beaked nose, same guarded blue eyes. I used to shiver at the very sight of him, the way he moved taking me years back to the love I nursed for Squall. I should have helped Kira; shown him the mistakes his dad made, maybe then things would have been different.   
Kira died in battle when he was 19, just ten years ago. It was only his third mission as a SeeD, but he was already so very proud. I still worked at Balamb Garden in those days, managing after 5 years of maturing and sowing my wild oats, to be decommissioned as an instructor when I was 22. I spent my entire life teaching there, and I was felt as if it were my own son beaming in his uniform the night of their graduation ball. Rinoa was the picture of a mother, snapping photographs and taking videos and bursting into tears every time he moved. Even Squall had a secret gleam of felicity in his eyes. Kira, that night and every night of his life, was a star that had somehow managed to fall into our laps from the furthest brightest reaches of the sky.   
He danced all night with his mother and his girl.... What was her name?.....Lecium...yes, Lecium was blonde and headstrong and brave, and Kira loved her more than the world. Watching them dance was like looking at what Squall and I could have had, and before the evening was over I had to leave, I couldn't watch anymore.   
I should have stayed...  
I went back to my room and took off my gown and my wedding ring and cried over my life. I would not say it was unhappy... I always had my teaching, that was my passion, and my marriage had been fair I suppose, even if it lasted only six years. It took Irvine to prove to me that I was not the marrying type, and I thank him for that, but I don't miss him all that much. We had passion and lust and marvelous sex, but we always imagined we were with someone else, the ones we really wanted to be with. But watching them dance I saw all I could have had. I did not have to be lonely.... So I laid on my bed and looked at my aging hands and selfishly indulged in my own regrets. I should have talked to Kira that night, besides the obligatory 'I am so proud' and 'Congratulations'. I should have told him that being a hero and being remembered as a warrior or savior was not everything in life, that you could be remembered for lots of things, and not everyone could save the world before they were 21.   
But Kira wanted to make his dad proud, he wanted to do justice to his memory, be what people expected the son of Squall Leonheart to be, and that is what got him killed. That third SeeD mission, they were holding back rebel forces from Esthar and Kira decided to be a hero. They never even found the body...  
Lecium left the Garden after that. I tried to be consoling, tried to be motherly, I even tried reminding her that this was one of the reasons relationships between students were forbidden, but rules had never stopped her and Kira and nothing I could have said would have stopped her then. She had so much potential.   
Anakin had to hold his mother upright at Kira's memorial service. I was surprised to see him there at all. Anakin had run away from his Garden to pursue a career as a musician, and his parents had refused to speak to him since. I guess some things salve all scars, right? It was like a strange deja vu, looking around the same sparkling auditorium, seeing Zell, who was a politician in Esthar so I never figured out if he had come out of diplomacy or mourning, and Edea, who would be taken by cancer the next winter, and Rinoa and Squall all crying with me over another lost soul. Squall was nearly rigid in his emotional bubble, not even weeping. I got so angry watching him, just sitting there while his son lay dead and his wife lost control. I don't even remember what I was thinking when I did it but I got up from my chair, circled the empty casket and slapped Squall across the face. He looked up at me, his salt and pepper hair moving ever so slightly as his head titled up, and I swear nothing even flickered in his eyes.   
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I yelled at him. "Kira died trying to make you proud. Couldn't you have once just told him you were happy with him? Do you just not care, is that it? Don't you love or need anything? Kira was a wonderful kid and you acted like he was some growth! You abandoned him as a baby and you just never stopped! This is your fault Godammit, and I can't believe I ever cared about you! You are a selfish bastard, do you hear me? Am I getting through to you? It is your fault he's dead."  
Squall finally looked up at me, long after I had everyone else's attention. His eyes were watering, and he looked so terribly, terribly broken. For an instant I regretted what I did, but then I realized that this was what it did take to get through to him, and I was glad, I was glad he was as broken-hearted and human as the rest of us.  
"Quistis...." He said, and then his tears finally fell. Gingerly I took the seat next to him and put my arm around his shoulder, briefly remembering a fantasy but brushing it away, it wasn't the time, and there was nothing romantic or sexual about the contact. It was acutely, and painfully, emotional though. For hours Squall wept against me just as Rinoa wept against Anakin.... It was the first time in decades of friendship that I ever saw him cry, and after that, he shut me out, completely. After the funeral, I was no longer Quistis to him; I was 'Instructor Kinneas'. When passing in the halls, I was lucky to get even a nod. I knew that all the pain he showed to me had proved too embarrassing for him, and he couldn't even look at me anymore. I had always thought things would be different between he and I if he opened up to me, and I was very, very right.   
Rinoa changed for the worst as well. She caught strange colds, flues, and a menagerie of aches and pains until she couldn't even rise from bed. Squall and Anakin were both powerless to do anything once Rinoa decided she didn't want to live anymore. Losing Kira took the strength right out of her.   
  
That all happened ten years ago. Rinoa died eight years ago, never recovering from Kira's death, and I did not attend her funeral. I somehow managed to avoid Squall altogether until five years ago when, at the age of 53, I took early retirement.   
I moved into the small orphanage that had once been home to all of us. Every day I go out to the sea and whisper prayers for Selphie, and Irvine, and remarkable Kira, and Rinoa, who I never quite liked but somehow I loved, like the rest. I give their greetings to the fresh salty wind and let its currents carry them to wherever my friends are to hear them. Every day of my life, I take a little time to think of them, to cry for them, and to remember the days when we were young, when we were semi-heroes, when we merely were.   
  
  



End file.
